Since finishing my last college degree in 1995, I have never been unemployed. In America, health insurance is typically tied to your job, unless you are over 65 years old, or you are on welfare. By law, I can continue my current health insurance from work, there is a gap nevertheless. So, even though COBRA insurance will retroactively cover me back to June 1st, I technically do not have insurance currently.
From the information I received when I quit, I know it will take a few weeks to even get the COBRA paperwork. However, I did not to be cur off from everything on May 31st. I am running low on prednisone and went online to try and refill the prescription. Instead of seeing my long list of medications, I found nothing. It seems my account was closed, which I understand, but I also lost all the upcoming refills. That means I will need to call my doctors for a new prescription at my local pharmacy. I did confirm with my friend that at her pharmacy, they will refund you the cost of your prescription if you have to pay retail but later have retroactive insurance coverage. Luckily I have lots of medications, other than prednisone. My friend also said that prednisone is super cheap wholesale, like $5 for 100 pills, and she can get some for me. Hopefully this can be resolved before I start running out of more expensive medications.
As for doctor visits, the director of benefits at my prior employer said I need to ask the provider to delay filing the claim, or pay first and get reimbursed when COBRA insurance is active. Unfortunately, I have a lot of appointments scheduled in two weeks. From past experience, something or everything will go wrong and I will need to deal with insurance issues for the next several months. There are pros and cons to single payer insurance in countries like Canada, but not switching health insurance providers all the time seems like a huge positive. I just hope any negative impact is only financial and not physical.
Life with chronic diseases 